The hazard of lead poisoning resulting from the ingestion, particularly by children, of lead based paint is well known and very prevalent. Since it would be almost impossible and quite expensive to either remove all of the existing lead based paint which is now on structures through the United States or to cover such structures with a child-proof barrier of plywood or plastic, alternative approaches to the solution of the problem have been investigated. The concept of coating the walls with a material which would be capable of precipitating the lead after it has been ingested by the child had been considered, but to date no material has been found which could safely perform this function. The use of the wide variety of lead precipitants such as calcium sulfide, sodium diethyl dithiocarbamate, British Anti-Lewisite (BAL) (dimercaptopropanol), dimercaptosuccinic acid, dihydrothioctic acid, sodium 2,3-dimercaptopropane sulphonate, potassium methyl and ethylxanthates, sodium alginate or pectate, dithiocarbamate based ion-exchange resins, milk, sodium fluoride, sodium sulfate, sodium phosphate, sodium thiocyanate, sodium sulfide, sodium thiosulfate, sodium alkylxanthates, sodium oxalates, sodium silicate, and sodium alginate or pectate for example have been considered but have been unusable either because the materials themselves are poisonous, the precipitated lead is not sufficiently insoluble either in both aqueous and fat based systems, the precipitation reaction does not go to completion, the precipitant itself is toxic, the materials are unstable either in the conditions of application or subsequent to ingestion, the materials cannot be formed into coating, have high equivalent weights or for some unknown reason as is the case with sodium alginate or pectate the precipitants just do not work in vivo. According to this invention, it has been found that certain metallic salts of the dithiocarbamates of polyfunctional amines of low equivalent weight possess the necessary characteristics of low toxicity, stability, low equivalent weight, completeness of precipitation and non-toxicity of the precipitant that are necessary to a usuable material for abatement of lead poisoning. It is accordingly an object of this invention to provide safe effective lead precipitants. It is another object of this invention to provide a digestible coating containing a lead precipitant that can be applied over lead based paint to reduce the hazard of lead poisoning. These and other objects of the invention will be readily apparent from the following descriptions.